Tom Carstensen

Tom Carstensen is a Copenhagen-based journalist and has worked for 17 years primarily on features, documentaries and news for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation — mostly radio, which is his favorite media, but he has also done TV documentaries. He also spent two years as a current affairs correspondent in London for DRC and as Premier League correspondent for SBS Broadcasting. Carstensen is also a regular contributor to BBC, RTE, Austrian Radio, The World and many others. He specializes in nationalism and radicalism both on the left and right sides of the spectrum and has covered various radical and extremist groups and parties in Denmark, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Germany. He also specializes in football fan culture with a focus on hooliganism on which he is the author of one book. He's also worked as an academic researcher and translator.  


Police officers are seen as Peter Madsen (not pictured) is surrounded by the police in Albertslund, Denmark, Oct. 20, 2020.

Danish submarine killer recaptured after prison escape

Conflict & Justice

On Oct. 20, Peter Madsen briefly escaped the country’s most high-security prison in Copenhagen — where he’s serving a life sentence — after taking a hostage and threatening prison guards and police with what appeared to be a gun and a suicide vest.

General view of the mink farm of Henrik Nordgaard Hansen and Ann-Mona Kulsoe Larsen near Naestved, Denmark, Nov. 6, 2020.

Denmark orders culling of minks to fight coronavirus 

A woman wearing a face mask is seen in a bus stop next to an information sign asking people to keep social distance due to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Stockholm, Sweden, June 26, 2020.

Sweden and Denmark have taken two very different approaches to COVID-19. What’s working?

COVID-19
Parents with their children stand in a queue waiting to get inside Stengaard School following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak north of Copenhagen, Denemark, April 15, 2020.

Denmark early to reopen schools

Pupils are seen during lunch break at the Korshoejskolen school, after it reopened following the lockdown due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread, in Randers, Denmark, April 15, 2020.

Parents refuse to send children to school in Denmark as coronavirus restrictions lift

COVID-19
A police officer checks a driver at the Danish border in Rodby, Denmark, March 14, 2020.

Denmark takes swift action against coronavirus: ‘You can’t do enough to contain this epidemic’

COVID-19

Denmark’s government is counting on most Danes to react to widespread closures with an attitude of social solidarity.